Paper is so fundamental to printmaking that it is easy to take for granted. Every print ever pulled has depended on it: the way it absorbs ink, how it responds to pressure, whether it holds a crisp impression or bleeds at the edges. Yet the story of how paper came to exist, and how it shaped the prints made on it, is one of the most fascinating threads running through the entire history of the craft.
Handmade paper and printmaking did not just coexist. They evolved together, each advancing in response to the other’s demands. Understanding that relationship changes how you think about the materials on your workbench.
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Origins: Paper Invention in China
The invention of paper is traditionally credited to Cai Lun, a Han Dynasty court official who, around 105 AD, refined the process of making sheets from beaten plant fibres suspended in water. Earlier materials such as silk, bamboo, and bone had served as writing surfaces, but they were expensive, heavy, or fragile. Cai Lun’s method used hemp waste, bark, and fishing nets, producing something lightweight, flexible, and cheap to make.
What is remarkable is how little the core process has changed. Pulping fibres, suspending them in water, lifting a screen through the suspension to form a sheet, and allowing it to dry: these steps remain the basis of handmade papermaking today, two thousand years later.
Paper and the First Prints
The earliest known printed objects followed paper closely. Buddhist texts and imagery drove much of the early demand for printing in Tang Dynasty China (618 to 907 AD), and woodblock printing developed in direct response to the need to reproduce religious material quickly and affordably.
The Diamond Sutra, dated 868 AD and now held in the British Library, is the oldest complete printed book with a confirmed date. It was printed on paper using carved woodblocks. Without paper, without its surface, its absorbency, its ability to receive an inked impression cleanly, this form of printing would not have been possible.
The relationship between paper and print was not incidental. It was foundational.
Japanese Washi: The Printmaker’s Paper
From China, papermaking spread to Korea and Japan, where it was adapted into something quite different. Japanese craftspeople developed washi, a paper made primarily from the inner bark of the kozo (mulberry) plant, as well as gampi and mitsumata, with qualities that remain unsurpassed for certain printmaking applications.
Washi fibres are long and interlocking, giving the finished sheet a strength that belies its thinness. It is simultaneously delicate to the touch and extraordinarily durable. Washi documents from the 8th century survive in better condition than European paper from the 19th. The Nara period (710 to 794 AD) saw the establishment of government paper workshops, and by the Heian period papermaking was a refined art with regional specialisations.
Washi and Mokuhanga
The development of Japanese woodblock printing, mokuhanga, was shaped entirely by the properties of washi. The water-based pigments used in mokuhanga require a paper that can absorb moisture without warping or disintegrating. Washi’s long fibres and sizing with nori (rice starch paste) make it ideal.
The way a mokuhanga artist applies dampened pigment to dampened paper, building up layers of translucent colour through multiple passes, is only possible because washi can take that treatment. A European paper of equivalent weight would fall apart. The prints of Hiroshige and Hokusai, their luminous atmospheric skies and delicate gradients, are not just products of skilled carving and printing. They are products of a very specific paper that made those effects achievable.
European Rag Paper and the Gutenberg Revolution
Paper arrived in Europe via the Arab world, reaching the Iberian Peninsula in the 11th century and spreading north over the following two centuries. Early European papermakers used linen and cotton rags as their raw material rather than plant bark, producing a sheet with different characteristics to its Eastern counterparts, generally thicker, with a more pronounced texture, and sized with animal gelatin rather than starch.
European rag paper proved well suited to the oil-based inks that European printers favoured. The gelatin sizing created a surface that resisted ink penetration, allowing finer detail and sharper impression than an unsized sheet would permit.
Gutenberg, Dürer, and the Paper Demand
Johannes Gutenberg’s development of movable type printing around 1440 created an enormous demand for paper. A single print run of the Gutenberg Bible required around 5,000 calfskins worth of vellum for the parchment edition, but the paper edition used linen rag paper, which was far cheaper and more scalable. The printing press and the paper mill expanded together.
For printmakers like Albrecht Dürer, paper quality was a constant concern. His engravings and woodcuts required paper with enough surface smoothness to hold fine line work, but sufficient body to withstand the pressure of the press. He is known to have imported Italian paper for his most important editions, Italian mills being the most advanced in Europe at the time.
The quality and surface of the paper was not a secondary consideration for these artists. It was part of the work itself.
The Industrial Revolution and the Loss of Handmade Paper
By the early 19th century, handmade paper production began to be displaced by machine-made paper. The Fourdrinier machine, invented in 1803, could produce paper continuously in long rolls rather than individual sheets, at a fraction of the cost and time of hand production.
Machine-made paper democratised printing further, costs fell and publications proliferated, but it came at a cost to quality. Machine paper uses shorter wood-pulp fibres than handmade rag paper, producing a sheet that is less strong, less archival, and often less sympathetic to fine printmaking. Acid in wood-pulp paper causes it to yellow and become brittle over time. Many 19th and 20th century prints and books are already deteriorating, while medieval rag paper manuscripts remain supple and legible.
The Printmakers Who Resisted
Even as machine paper became standard, serious printmakers continued to seek out handmade or high-quality papers. Etchers and lithographers in particular found that the unpredictability of cheap machine paper, inconsistent thickness, surface variation, poor absorbency, created problems that handmade paper avoided.
The tradition of pairing technique with the right paper never disappeared. It simply became a mark of a certain seriousness about the craft.
The Revival of Handmade Paper
From the mid-20th century onwards, a renewed interest in handmade paper developed, driven partly by the arts and crafts movement, partly by printmakers seeking better materials, and partly by artists who became interested in paper itself as a medium rather than just a surface.
Studios dedicated to hand papermaking emerged in the UK, US, and Japan. Artists like Helen Hiebert and Winifred Lutz pushed paper beyond the functional and into the sculptural. The Hand Papermaking organisation, founded in 1986, now documents and supports practitioners worldwide.
Washi in particular has seen a significant revival. In 2014, UNESCO added traditional Japanese washi craftsmanship to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list, recognising the continuity of a technique largely unchanged since the Nara period.
Contemporary Handmade Paper and Seed Paper
One of the more striking developments in contemporary handmade paper is the incorporation of seeds and plant material directly into the sheet during production. Seed paper embeds wildflower or other plant seeds into recycled paper pulp during the forming process, the same basic technique Cai Lun used in 105 AD, applied to a new purpose.
It is a genuinely interesting extension of the handmade paper tradition, one that takes the material back to its plant-based origins and gives it a function beyond the printed surface.
Why Paper Choice Still Matters for Printmakers
All of this history is relevant to practice. The paper chosen for a lino print, an etching, or a screen print affects the outcome in ways that are worth understanding rather than leaving to chance.
Long-fibred papers, Japanese kozo papers, quality washi, or good rag papers, hold a clean impression and resist tearing under pressure. Their surface takes ink evenly. They do not yellow. A print made on good paper will outlast one made on cheap cartridge stock by centuries.
For relief printing in particular, a slightly absorbent, uncoated surface works best. The ink needs to make contact with the fibres rather than sitting on top of a coating. Japanese papers like Hosho or Sekishu, or European papers like Zerkall, are favoured by many printmakers for exactly this reason.
Getting to know the papers available, testing them, understanding how they behave with different inks and under different pressures: this is part of the craft, just as it was for Dürer sourcing Italian paper or an Edo-period mokuhanga artist selecting kozo from a specific prefecture.
